The Week’s guide to what’s worth watching

Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal

Following her release from prison, “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss moved to southern Nevada, where she made a quixotic attempt to open a legal brothel for female customers. This documentary follows her misadventures with locals none too eager to welcome a notorious new neighbor, and draws a rather poignant portrait of Fleiss and her peculiar American dream. Monday, July 21, at 9 p.m., HBO

Chasing Churchill: In Search of My Grandfather

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Celia Sandys, granddaughter of Winston Churchill, traces her famous forebear’s footsteps around the world and through the 20th century in this colorful three-part series. In Part 1, she looks for his American mother’s birthplace in New York City; visits the Cuban battlefield where Churchill narrowly evaded death when barely 21; and discovers where he escaped a South African prison as a correspondent covering the Boer War. Mondays, July 21–Aug. 4, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings

Wide Angle: Burning Season

After the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide is Indonesia, where farmers clear rain forest to grow cash crops such as palm oil. Wide Angle follows a young Australian entrepreneur to boardrooms around the world as he proposes a commercial solution to global warming: selling carbon credits represented by Indonesian forests to Western companies that pollute. Tuesday, July 22, at 9 p.m., PBS; check local listings

The Black Woman & Family/The Black Man

CNN’s Black in America series continues with two reports on consecutive nights. The Black Woman and Family examines such issues as single parenthood, educational and economic inequality for black women, and the effects of HIV/AIDS. The Black Man follows members of the 1968 class of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., to assess whether life is better for black men now than at the end of the civil-rights era. Wednesday, July 23, and Thursday, July 24, at 9 p.m., CNN

Wild China

This six-part, two-week series kicks off a week of programming about China in anticipation of next month’s Beijing Olympics. Its subject is the nation’s mammoth countryside, and the series introduces viewers to sweeping panoramas of its limestone hills, vast mountainsides, and rice paddies, as well as to its signature attractions: the Great Wall and giant pandas. In high-def. Sunday, July 27, at 8 p.m., Travel Channel

Other highlights

Costas Now

The sports magazine show hosted by Bob Costas welcomes baseball legends Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Frank Robinson. Monday, July 21, at 10:30 p.m., HBO

Explorer: Finding Anastasia

Forensic analysts strive to verify the fate of Czar Nicholas II’s family. Tuesday, July 22, at 10 p.m., National Geographic Channel

Surviving History

Craftsmen re-create a Chinese repeating crossbow and other antique inventions. Sunday, July 27, at 10 p.m., History Channel

Show of the week

Mad Men

It’s Valentine’s Day 1962 as this Golden Globe–winning drama begins its second season: Jackie Kennedy is giving a TV tour of the White House, and everything seems to be going just right for ad executive Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Recently promoted at his Madison Avenue agency, he has a romantic night slated with his beautiful wife (January Jones) at a posh New York hotel. But things are about to get complicated. His subordinates are jockeying for position, his boss wants him to bring in younger talent, and his unsatisfied wife is oddly intrigued by her friend’s foray into prostitution. Mad Men continues to use carefully observed details to reveal dark currents of desire and despair beneath the glossy veneer of the New Frontier. Sunday, July 27, at 10 p.m., AMC

Movies on TV this week

Monday, July 21

The Matrix (1999)

Trend-setting effects and action sequences highlight this sci-fi thriller starring Keanu Reeves as a computer hacker thrust into a war against a malevolent artificial intelligence. 1:40 p.m., Cinemax

Tuesday

Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)

Kurt Vonnegut’s sci-fi tale follows a man who hops randomly through time, from being a World War II POW to a zoo denizen on an alien planet. Michael Sacks stars. 4:05 p.m., Sundance

Wednesday

A Thousand Clowns (1965)

Jason Robards reprised his Broadway role as a New York nonconformist loath to rejoin the rat race but desperate to keep custody of his 12-year-old nephew. A Best Picture Oscar nominee. 3:45 p.m., TCM

Thursday

No Way Out (1987)

Vintage thriller The Big Clock is refit for Kevin Costner, who plays a naval officer racing to avoid being implicated in his lover’s murder. With Gene Hackman. 8 p.m., Encore

Friday

Anna Karenina (1948)

Vivien Leigh portrays Tolstoy’s tragic noblewoman in this lavish Alexander Korda production. Ralph Richardson co-stars. 8 a.m., FMC

Saturday

Throne of Blood (1957)

Akira Kurosawa transplants Shakespeare’s Macbeth to medieval Japan in this classic, with Toshiro Mifune as a samurai spurred to murder by his ambitious wife. 8 a.m., IFC

Sunday

Ronin (1998)

Superb car chase sequences accent this action thriller, in which rival spies vie for a mysterious suitcase. Robert De Niro stars. 10 p.m., Flix